


It's sixteen miles to the promised land (and I promise you, I'm doing the best I can)

by Gorgeousgreymatter



Series: Always Female Stiles 'verse: I will run you like a thread [9]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek, Always Female Stiles Stilinski, Birthday Presents, Birthday Smut, Cis Female Stiles Stilinski, Claiming Bites, Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things, Devotion, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub Undertones, Evolved Derek Hale, F/M, Female Stiles Stilinski, Fluff and Smut, Light Dom/sub, Mates Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, POV Alternating, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Possessive Derek, Possessive Stiles Stilinski, Praise Kink, Road Trips, Role Reversal, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Scent Marking, Stiles Stilinski is a Nice Thing, Stiles Stilinski's Birthday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:54:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26119909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gorgeousgreymatter/pseuds/Gorgeousgreymatter
Summary: “Not that I don't love morning sex,” she purrs, nuzzling into his neck and making him shiver, “but that better not be my only present.”“It isn't,” Derek murmurs before kissing her again. “But it's not here. We have to go get it.”“I was wondering how you were going to fit a pony in the loft.” Stiles laughs, smiling so wide against his mouth that their teeth clack together. “Where are we going?”Derek hums, playing with the ends of her hair splayed over his chest. “I have some old family friends in Ashland. It's not that far, and I figured you might want to meet some werewolves that aren't angsty teenagers.”Stiles pulls back and Derek bites down an embarrassingly needy whine. “Road trip?”“Something like that.”
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: Always Female Stiles 'verse: I will run you like a thread [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719364
Comments: 19
Kudos: 242





	It's sixteen miles to the promised land (and I promise you, I'm doing the best I can)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for the wonderful support for this series! There is a cameo of my favorite character from the comic/TV show Preacher, but knowledge of the show or said character is entirely unnecessary. Their presence is meant only as a wink-and-nod so to speak, and also laziness because I didn't want to have to create too many OCs lol. 
> 
> Also I picked a random day for Stiles's birthday, so don't @ me. I KNOW IT'S WRONG BUT I NEEDED IT TO BE SUMMER OKAY
> 
> ALSO ALSO this is for Rachel and Oni specifically since they are probably the only ones reading this :P

It's sixteen miles to the promised land (and I promise you, I'm doing the best I can)

For years after the fire, Derek never slept deeply enough not to jerk awake at the slightest sound, like his body was stuck in some permanent state of fight or flight without a way for him to turn it off. It's gotten better lying next to Stiles and listening to her quiet snoring, breathing in the soft, floral scent of her mixing with his own. It soothes the restless wolf in him that used to pace around all night in a way nothing has, not in a long, long time. Maybe not ever. There's only been a handful of times that Derek can remember Stiles waking up before him. He loves it, those quiet moments in the morning when his eyelids flicker open and he can just watch her, bathed in the muted glow of the sun trying to peek through the curtains. It's moments like that where he thinks maybe someday he can have it, because of her: _peace._

Of course, that's not what happens this morning. Derek can always sense her, even in sleep, so he doesn't jump or flinch when he feels her sudden weight on him, pinning him down. He's getting better at that too, shoving down his instincts that always threaten to prickle when she does things like this.

“Wake up, Sleepywolf!” Stiles says. “It's a very important day and I'm not wasting it waiting for your ancient wolfy ass to get up.” 

Derek wants to laugh because she's never the one waiting. Half the time Derek has to beg and plead and practically sling Stiles over his shoulder or drag her by the ankles in order to get her out of bed. Not that he minds, because he gets the chance to offer her plenty of incentives, like pancakes, coffee, and sex. His hands fly to her hips like she's drawing him there with magnets, but he keeps his eyes closed in the illusion of sleep. “Yeah, I did hear it was World Oceans Day today.”

“I liked you better when you weren't funny,” Stiles says.

“Water conservation is important,” Derek says, and his eyes don't have to be open to imagine the look on her face, “and the second thing is just untrue.” He opens them anyway, and he's grinning automatically when he sees that she's pouting, her bottom lip caught under her teeth. “And how could I possibly forget your birthday's today when you literally wrote it on my hand last night?” he adds, holding up his palm where the words STILES'S _BDAY DON'T 4GET, SOURWOLF_ are etched in smeared blue ink. 

“I was just being thorough.”

“You referred to all of May as your pre-birthday birthday month.”

“Who knows what your geriatric brain might forget,” Stiles says, grabbing for his hand and twining their fingers together. 

Derek rolls his eyes, but yanks her down so he can kiss her, Stiles melting into him the way she always does. “Not that I don't love morning sex,” she purrs, nuzzling into his neck and making him shiver, “but that better not be my only present.” 

“It isn't,” Derek murmurs before kissing her again. “But it's not here. We have to go get it.” 

“I was wondering how you were going to fit a pony in the loft.” Stiles laughs, smiling so wide against his mouth that their teeth clack together. “Where are we going?”

Derek hums, playing with the ends of her hair splayed over his chest. “I have some old family friends in Ashland. It's not that far, and I figured you might want to meet some werewolves that aren't angsty teenagers.” 

Stiles pulls back and Derek bites down an embarrassingly needy whine. “Road trip?” 

“Something like that.” 

“You,” Stiles says, like she's just uncovered his deepest, darkest secret, “are nice.” 

Derek growls, but it's mostly for effect, and flips them so quickly he hears the breath get knocked right out of Stiles's lungs. “ _You take that back.”_

 _“Make me_ ,” Stiles says, nipping at his shoulder. 

Derek never was one to refuse a challenge. 

Stiles might've woken them early, but between morning sex, followed by shower sex, followed by Derek eating her out on the floor of the kitchen after making her birthday pancakes, it's past mid-morning by the time they actually make it on to the road. It's not too long of a drive, four hours or so, but Stiles is already asleep (“ _I'm not sleeping, Sourwolf. I'm resting my eyes.”)_ before they even pass the Now Leaving Beacon Hills sign. He doesn't mind the quiet, and Stiles is sure to wake up and start filling it eventually. So for the first couple of hours, it's just the low warbling of some oldies station that she insisted putting on as they rolled out of town that for some reason Derek can't bring himself to shut off:

_“I was under the impression that the driver picked the music, and shotgun kept their mouth shut.”_

_Stiles snorts. “Yeah, like that's happening.” Her feet are on the dashboard, despite his protests, but it's a battle Derek's given up all hope of winning. And Stiles would argue that he doesn't really mind, because he gets a front row seat to look at those long legs he's so fond of, and maybe she's right but he'll never admit it._ “ _Don't you want to listen to the music of your people, Derek?”_

_“What, like werewolf music?” Derek asks, brows furrowed. “Because that's not a thing.”_

_“No, idiot,” Stiles says, though she's giving him that impish grin when she turns and looks at him while fiddling with the radio dial, music starting to trill from the speakers. He recognizes the song because Laura used to play the 45 ad nauseam on their mother's old record player when she'd found it boxed up, dusty, in the attic one summer._

_“Cat Stevens?” Derek asks, arching an eyebrow. “Are you implying something about my age?”_

_“I'm pretty sure he goes by Yusef Islam now,” Stiles says, matter-of-fact, before adding with a wink, “and I would never, Sourwolf."_

_“Of course not. You never, ever make fun of me. It's practically unheard of.”_

_“Damn straight. I'm a perfect angel.”_

_Derek's the one snorting this time, and Stiles laughs so hard she cries, and the whole thing makes Derek almost want to cry for an entirely different reason._

Stiles finally stirs, but neither one of them says anything for a while. He hadn't expected it, for the silence that sometimes fell between them to be as comfortable as it was, but Stiles still surprises him even after their years together as uneasy allies, to friends, and finally to lovers. Because Derek's still not great with the whole small talk thing, though he tries now, more than he ever did before with anyone. It's not easy for him when those memories get pulled out like a thorn stuck in his palm. It’s weird what he remembers, what comes to his mind seemingly out of nowhere. Stuck in traffic on the freeway, he recalls the trips he and Laura used to hate, crammed like sardines into the back of his mother’s van with their siblings, sweating in the hot, summer sun. Filling up at a gas station, he tells Stiles about the time his family accidentally left Cora behind at one when she'd gone to pee and how everyone had blamed it on Peter even though none of them had noticed until they were nearly ten minutes away. 

…

“You snore.”

 _What_. “I do not.” 

“You do, but it's cute.” Derek grins, toothy and blindingly white, and it makes her stomach flip. Even after all this time, he can flash her just the right look, that boyish smile, and suddenly she's all butterflies. She'd blame it on the Alpha-ego, but it's just Derek. A glimpse maybe, of how he used to be, once. His hand finds a familiar place-hold on her knee and damn him, she practically melts. 

It's weird seeing Derek outside of Beacon Hills. It should feel wrong, like seeing a wild animal caged in a zoo, or a dog walk backward on its hind legs. But it's the opposite. Seems like the farther away they get, the more she notices it: something in Derek she almost never sees, a lightness, a calm that softens the uptight curve of his mouth, that little scowl, and smooths out that ever-present wrinkle between his brows. She knows she's being quieter than normal, but honestly, she's enjoying just watching him to the point she's worried that talking will ruin it. Because she loves sexy, broody, mysterious bad-boy Derek, sure – but she also really, really likes this strangely happy Derek. 

Like a lot. 

Happy Derek _talks_. Not a lot, but it's something. He tells her things. She'll happily take his ribbing about the snoring, especially when it ends with him telling her about the time he'd been forced to share one motel room with his entire family, and Laura and Peter had snored so loud that Derek ended up sleeping in the tub. She forgets sometimes, that he had things like that. A childhood – birthday parties and family vacations and after-school snacks, just like she did. They both did. For a while, at least. She's pretty sure Derek forgets too, and if this helps him remember, god, she'll go on a hundred road trips with him. A thousand. Anywhere he wants to go. 

Still, Stiles can't stay quiet forever, and it's not long before her stomach ends up betraying her way before she expected her mouth to. Eventually, they find a diner smack dab in the middle of nowhere, and they get burgers and fries, and Derek even buys Stiles a milkshake too, teasing her endlessly about her presumably hollow leg. They eat it all sprawled out on a picnic blanket in a field a couple of miles outside of the last town they passed, and when they're finished, Derek kisses the taste of salt and Coca Cola out of her mouth while nobody but the cows in the pasture they're next to look on.

 _It's perfect_. 

_“_ So tell me about your werewolf friends,” Stiles says, her head in Derek's lap, watching the clouds roll listlessly over them in the hazy blue sky. “You've never really mentioned any other wolves before.”

“They're a family pack, like mine was. We used to visit them every summer." Derek cards his fingers through her hair. It feels nice, and Stiles can't help closing her eyes to enjoy it, just for a second. “Laura and I – we stayed with them for a while. After.” 

She doesn't need to ask a follow-up question to know what _after_ he's talking about. She just squeezes his hand and that's enough. “Why didn't you? Just stay there, I mean. Why go to New York at all?”

Derek is silent again, and Stiles isn't quite sure he's going to answer. To be honest, she regrets asking since she can practically see the bubble of Happy Derek go _pop_ right in front of her eyes, but it's too late now. “We didn't know if hunters would follow us,” Derek starts, and the words are a little stilted like he's not sure exactly how they're going to come out but they're coming out anyway. “They had kids, and we didn't want anyone else to get hurt.” _Because of me_ , is the unspoken that Stiles doesn't need to hear him say to know that he's thinking it. “And Laura, she was too restless to stay. She wasn't ready to be an alpha, and I don't think she even wanted me around, but I wasn't ready to let her go. So I went with her.”

 _Oh_ . She hadn't really thought about it much, what Derek's life was like in the years that stretched between the death of his family and _“this is private property,”_ beyond how sad it must have been. How lost he must have felt. Even if Derek and Laura had each other, Stiles knows what it's like firsthand, to feel alone in grief. 

She must be making a funny face because Derek's peering down at her all apprehensively. “You're not feeling sorry for me, are you?” 

No, not sorry, she thinks. Worse. She shakes her head. “I feel guilty.”

Derek frowns. “Why? None of it was your fault.”

“I hate what happened to you,” she starts, “and I hate why you had to come back.” Her hand finds his jaw, swiping her thumb over his stubble almost absentmindedly. 

“But?” Derek prompts, leaning into the touch.

“But –,” she says, “I wouldn't have you if you didn't, and I think...I think that makes me a not very good person because I'm _not...”_

Now Derek's the one looking at her strangely. “Not what?”

Stiles bites at her lip, feeling a shameful blush start to bloom on her cheeks. “ _Sorry_ ,” she whispers. And that's really got to push her to the front of the line in terms of eternal damnation. Because it's awful and selfish and greedy and –

And apparently Derek doesn't care, or if he does, he's got a weird way of showing it. His lips are on hers so suddenly that the breath she's just taken feels like it gets sucked right out of her mouth. Kissing Derek, it somehow feels just as electrifying as the first time he'd done it. He never does what she expects. He's gentle when she wants rough, bruising when he's being sweet. It's disorienting is what it is, in the best possible way, she thinks, nails digging frantically into the meat of Derek's shoulder as he rolls her onto her back with an almost offensive amount of grace.

“That was not the reaction I was expecting,” she finally manages to gasp out when Derek stops his assault on her mouth just enough to let her catch her breath. She feels Derek's teeth worrying at her throat, and Stiles's hands tug on his hair just enough to get him to pull back so she can look at him because right now she's got no idea what's going on in his head. 

Derek is _grinning_ at her. “You _liked_ me. You liked me from the beginning _.”_

Oh my god. He's smug about it. She's baring her soul here, and he's being smug. “Shut up, _I did not_.” 

“You did,” he says again, and Stiles wants to be annoyed, but the way he's licking at her pulse point is making thinking beyond _more, yes, please_ extremely difficult. Will there ever be a time where even just a smile from him isn't going to make her feel like this? 

“Not anymore,” she huffs.

“Liar.” 

And if that isn't the goddamn fucking truth. 

It's a little after three by the time they make it to Ashland, and Stiles is starting to feel that familiar buzz of anxiety vibrate under her skin. Mostly because she's got no idea what to expect. She's never been around another pack before, at least not one that wasn't actively trying to kidnap or kill her, but that's not even the real reason why she's nervous. Mostly it's because _what if they don't like her?_ Which seems incredibly stupid considering she's supposed to be the fragile little human going into a literal den of wolves, but that's pretty on-brand for her. They drive through the city, and she tries to distract herself by staring out the window, taking in the colorful hodgepodge of shops and restaurants in a bustling downtown that's clearly more culturally impressive than Main Street in Beacon Hills. Though she isn't that shocked when eventually they break off the main road and start heading out into what feels like the country, where the trees get thicker and the buildings sprawl out, built farther and farther apart. It's not surprising. If the Hale house was anything to go by, werewolves clearly liked their privacy from prying, human eyes. 

“You smell nervous,” Derek says, squeezing the hand he's been holding on the gear shift for the past twenty minutes. 

Oh goody, she thinks, there's going to be plenty of that _I can smell your feelings_ crap to look forward to. She's tempted to deny it, but what was the point? “What if they don't like me? 

Derek laughs. “Helpful,” Stiles says, glaring at him.

“They'll like you fine. _I_ like you.” 

Stiles rolls her eyes, but the retort falls off her tongue because she can see the house in the distance now and her throat does that fun constricting thing. It's big – bigger than Derek's. A lot bigger. And it's a little strange to see a fucking Victorian mansion practically smack-dab in the middle of a forest, but it's pretty. Old, but obviously well-kept, ivy growing in swirls along the sides, window panes fluttering idyllically in the breeze. 

Derek kills the engine. “Looks like we made it before the party started.” 

And he says it all nonchalantly, which makes Stiles sputter, because _party? “_ Party for who? Please, for the love of god, don't say me.” 

Derek steps out, pops the trunk, and throws their bag over his shoulder before coming around to open her door. He's grinning at her now. “No, not you. Joshua, the alpha – his son, Quentin, is turning 10, and that's kind of a big deal for wolves.” 

Stiles just stares up at him blankly. 

“It's when we start our training,” he says, shrugging, “and Q, he's next in line to be alpha, so it's a bigger deal than most.” 

“Oh my god. You mean there's like...werewolf bar mitzvahs?” Stiles asks, trying but failing to swallow down a slightly crazed-sounding giggle. “Like... _werewolf bar mitzvah, spooky, scary?_ " It's Derek's turn to stare blankly now, and she shouldn't be surprised considering his pop culture knowledge is equivalent to her nursing-home-ridden grandfather's. Although, to be fair, Derek probably hadn't spent much time in New York watching television. “I know, I know. You don't understand that reference. But just so we're clear, it was hilarious.” 

Derek shakes his head. “This is going to be fun.” 

…

They don't even get the chance to make it all the way to the porch before the screen door gets thrown open with a bang, and then there's a fast-moving blur that flies off the porch steps and heads right for Derek. It probably would have knocked him off balance if his attacker wasn't a 75-lb, 10-year-old boy. Growing up, there was rarely a day he wasn't blindsided by one or both of his twin sisters jumping out at him from behind a door, or from inside a closet, or under a bed, or in one memorable instance, from behind a shower curtain. They'd actually managed to surprise him that time, and he'd fallen backwards and shattered the mirror, and they'd all gotten in trouble with Talia for that one. She'd had to pick shards of glass out of Derek's back for almost an hour. The twins had left him alone for a long time after that, though they'd just gone after Laura instead. She turned out to be a lot more ruthless than he was, so the game had quickly lost its appeal.

So, he knows exactly how to play this, grabbing the kid and tossing him firmly but gently to the ground, pinning him with an elbow. The kid snarls, but it's with all the ferocity of a puppy, basically, and Derek snaps back, baring his fangs in an exaggerated grin. 

“Alpha Hale, Alpha Hale! I totally almost got you that time!”

“Derek, Q. I told you it's just Derek,” he says, shaking his head and offering the kid his hand, but the boy's already leaped upright, bouncing excitedly on both feet. Quentin is nearly half a foot taller than the last time Derek was here, all gangling, uncoordinated limbs and a mop of black hair so curly that it makes him look like he stuck his finger into an electrical socket. His eyes flash gold and Derek's flash in return, and then they both throw their heads back and laugh.

“Who's that?”

“This is Stiles, my fiancée,” Derek says, and when he turns to look at her, he feels his ears go pink because she's giving him this intense look like she's never seen him before. It's more than a little disarming.

Stiles waves apprehensively. “Happy Birthday?”

“Thanks.” Quentin does that same little head tilt Derek knows drives Stiles up the wall, but even she's not going to roll her eyes at a child. “What's a Stiles?

The look she turns and gives him is murderous. “You paid him to say that, didn't you?”

“Oh, I wish I could take credit for that.” 

…

There's a woman who Derek introduces as Quentin's mother, Astrid, waiting for them in the kitchen, perched gracefully on a barstool at the little Formica island. She's holding what looks like a cupcake in one hand and a spatula in the other. There's flour on her cheek, stark white against her skin, but she's still alarmingly pretty, with dark brown eyes and black hair the color of ink cascading down her back.

“Come on in and have a seat,” Astrid says, gesturing at the table with a frosting-laden spoon. “Sorry about the mess, but there's about a hundred more of these to frost before the party tonight. Why I thought cupcakes would be a good idea, I have no clue.” When she looks up at them, she's beaming a blindingly white smile that reminds her of Derek's, like she couldn't be happier to see them. The way she's talking reminds Stiles a lot of Mrs. McCall, and Stiles finds that fact strangely comforting.

“We can help,” Derek says, and Stiles can't stop herself from looking at him like he's speaking a language she's never heard before, because if she's not mistaken, she's about to witness Derek fucking Hale, of all people, frost cupcakes. For a birthday party.

“Great,” Astrid says. While they've been talking, Stiles has been watching Quentin attempt to steal one of the cupcakes and shove it in his mouth without his mother noticing. Of course, she does, because werewolf reflexes, and Astrid doesn't even look away from the cake she's holding as her hand darts across the table to slap her son's away. “Not yet. Go get your sister so she can help, too.”

The boy rolls his eyes, and Stiles expects he'll go off in a huff, but he doesn't. Instead, Quentin opens his mouth and screeches, “ _Shelley_!”

They all collectively wince, even Stiles, who by far has the least sensitive ears of the bunch. Astrid growls and Quentin grins sweetly at her. There's some stomping and banging from upstairs, all preceding the appearance of the sister, Shelley presumably, trudging into the room. She looks a little older than Quentin, twelve, maybe thirteen, with short blonde hair, blue eyes, and a scowl that Stiles definitely remembers seeing in the mirror when she was that age.

“You don't have to yell, idiot,” Shelley says, sour-faced, practically collapsing into a chair at the kitchen table with her arms crossed dramatically. “You could have just said my name. I can hear you.”

“Yeah, Q, we definitely all heard you,” Astrid says, “and Shelley, don't call your brother an idiot.”

“I will when he stops being one.”

“Mom!”

“No claws at the table.”

Derek's been mostly silent next to her, and Stiles has been torn between watching him meticulously decorate a cupcake for this child's birthday party like he's painting the Sistine Chapel out of frosting and sprinkles or something, and this almost supernaturally normal sibling squabble unfolding in front of her (with the exception of the whole claws thing, obviously). But then he's laughing, honest-to-god, full-on, busted-up-belly laughing, and Stiles turns to look at him, bewildered, because who is this person and what have they done with Derek?

Astrid wasn't exaggerating. There is a literal fuckton of cupcakes to frost, but Stiles gets it, especially after what Derek had dubbed The Lemon Bar Incident of 2013, where she'd baked so many at once for their complete failure of an engagement party that eventually even Isaac had begged for respite, and he hardly ever refused food. Whatever, she'd been stress-baking. She doesn't mind the task anyway, because it gives her something else to focus on other than her jangling nerves, which the werewolves in present company seem polite enough to ignore.

“So,” Astrid says suddenly, and Stiles nearly falls right out of her chair, because she'd definitely been zoning out for a minute. She probably would have, if Derek hadn't grabbed for her flailing elbow. “How did you two meet?”

Stiles opens her mouth to say something, but Derek volunteers an answer before she gets the chance.

“She trespassed on my property and then she had me arrested as a murder suspect.”

“That was an accident!” Stiles sputters, face flushing.

Derek arches one of those ridiculous eyebrows, but he's smirking, so she knows she's being teased. “You mean you accidentally called your father, who accidentally handcuffed me, and then accidentally threw me into the back of his squad car before handcuffing me, _again_ , to a bench?”

“That's correct,” Stiles retorts, sticking out her tongue. Derek's eyes narrow, and Stiles's heart feels like it skips several beats reflexively, but Astrid is laughing loudly enough that it seems to escape her notice.

“Oh, that's not so bad,” she says, still wiping her eyes and grinning to herself. “I hit Joshua with my car.”

“It's true,” Quentin says, at least that's what Stiles thinks he says. His mouth is full of cake. She's pretty sure he might've swallowed some whole.

“How – what?” and Stiles immediately has a thousand questions about this, flickering wide eyes at Derek, who doesn't even look surprised, nodding his head like he's heard the story a million times.

“I was driving home from my shift at the hospital when I saw this white dog shoot across the road. It was icy, so I couldn't stop in time. God, when I heard that thud I started to bawl my eyes out before I even killed the engine. Imagine my surprise,” she says, looking pointedly at Stiles, “when that 'dog' turned into a six-foot-tall naked man. At least the idiot was lucky enough to get hit by a doctor, I guess. ”

This gets Stiles's attention. “You were human?” She must have been, Stiles thinks, because she's talking like she'd never seen a werewolf before.

Astrid nods and then shrugs. “At the time.”

Huh. Stiles's stomach flips for reasons she isn't willing to think about at the moment. Derek must sense this, because his hand is suddenly on her knee, and he's quickly changing the subject. “Where is Joshua anyway?”

“I don't know. Nobody tells me anything around here,” Astrid says, gesturing wildly again with her frosting spoon, “I just bake the cupcakes, obviously.”

“He went to pick up Cassidy and Charlie from Mommy and Me music class,” Shelley offers tonelessly, not even bothering to look up from her phone. Apparently preteens really were the same regardless of species, supernatural or not.

Next to her Derek stiffens, and Stiles jumps when she hears the clang of the butter knife Derek had been using getting dropped onto the table. “Cassidy is here?” Stiles turns to look at him, perplexed, because she's not sure she's ever heard that shrill tone in Derek's voice before.

“Who's Cassidy?”

“He's Charlie's nanny,” Astrid smirks knowingly and Stiles watches Derek roll his eyes like he knows what's coming next, “and Derek's best friend.”

Stiles wasn't sure her eyes could get any wider, but sure enough, they can, because as far as she knows, she's never ever heard Derek talk about any friends from his past. Or his past at all, other than the traumatic highlights, of course. Although up until this morning, the Grey pack had been a mystery, so she supposes she should get used to it, these little bits and pieces of him from before that get unearthed the more time they spend with each other.

Derek's ears are red again and he's scowling so intensely it's like he's combined the power of all the scowls he missed this morning into one giant super-scowl. “He's a vampire,” he grits out, crossing his arms in an eerily similar recreation of Shelley's earlier dramatics. “And he's not my best friend. He's an id--”

“Wait...Vampires are real?” Stiles blurts out, frowning at Derek. “You never told me about vampires.”

“Of course I didn't tell you about vampires,” Derek huffs. “I didn't want to answer five thousand questions about them, and I knew you'd want to do something stupid, like meet one.”

“Well, I'm not the one who's best friends with one,” Stiles says petulantly, “and I think that ship has sailed because I'm pretty sure I'm about to meet one anyway.”

“Oh, I like her,” Astrid says, giving Derek a sly wink that only makes Stiles blush again.

Before Stiles can get started on the first of five thousand questions, all the wolves go still, doing that weird head tilt thing that she’s become very familiar with. She can’t hear anything, obviously, but Quentin looks at his mother and beams, yelling, “They’re home!” before rocketing out of the chair he’d been sitting in and using that blurry super-speed that Stiles can’t really follow to race toward the door.

“Please don’t knock over the --” Astrid starts to call after him, but there’s a roar, a crash, and she just sighs before muttering, “ -- coat rack.” 

“Honey, I think it’s finally dead,” A low voice says, tinged with laughter. Quentin has reappeared, thrown over the shoulder of the laughing man Stiles takes to be Joshua. It has to be, because he's tall in that towering sort of way, with deep blue eyes, and that same quiet yet commanding presence that Derek has also somehow mastered. Must be an alpha thing. When his gaze falls on Stiles and Derek, he grins and waves. “You guys made it in one piece.” 

“Derek and Stiles were telling us how they met,” Astrid says, reaching up to kiss him on the cheek. 

“Did'ya tell them how you hit Josh with your car?” Stiles wasn’t expecting to hear an accent, a thick one, Irish she thinks, especially not from the strange-looking man trailing behind the Grey alpha. He’s holding a carseat in one hand and a huge umbrella in the other, so this has to be the nanny slash vampire slash _Derek’s best friend_ , Cassidy. It’s impossible to tell what he looks like under all those layers. Because the vampire’s definitely overdressed for summer in a big denim jacket and a scarf pulled up over his face, complete with an oversized pair of aviators perched precariously on his nose.

“Lightly tapped, I believe, is how she usually describes it,” Joshua offers.

“You were fine,” Astrid says, rolling her eyes. “ _I was traumatized._ ” 

“I was actually _not fine_ ,” Joshua says, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed. “I broke three ribs and dislocated both my shoulders.” 

“You healed,” Astrid scoffs. “I wish that’s what I could have said about my Honda.” She reaches for the baby, who squeals happily when she lifts him into her arms. “How was Charlie, Cass? Did he have fun?” 

“‘Course he did,” Cassidy says, “and we even managed not to chew through any of the instruments or bite anyone today so I call that a ragin’ success.” 

It’s odd for her, Stiles thinks, to have sat here speechless for so long, just watching. But it kind of feels like she’s intruding on a private, family moment. It had never occurred to her really, outside of the objective fact, that Derek had once had a family just like this one. A family who probably stood in the kitchen on any given day, just like this, the same way the Greys did. Talking and laughing about nothing and everything at the same time. It makes her heart do funny things in her chest, and she can’t help but squeeze Derek’s hand reflexively, a nervous twitch. Derek squeezes back, but he’s looking at her a little strange too. It feels like he’s about to lean over and ask her something, but he doesn’t get the chance, because they both hear Cassidy’s sudden and loud exclamation of recognition, and Stiles watches with amazement as all the color drains out of Derek’s face. 

“Bring it in, Wolf Boy,” Cassidy says roguishly, stretching out his arms and heading right for them. 

Holy shit. Stiles is pretty sure that the vampire is actually going to try and hug him. Hug her grumpy, tactile-averse fiance right here in front of her like it was something completely normal that he did all the time. 

“I swear to Christ, Cassidy, if you come near me, I will rip your throat out with my teeth,” Derek growls. 

“Just as charming as I remembered. Is that how he hooked you, then?” Cassidy asks, gesturing in Stiles’s direction. 

“Actually, kind of,” Stiles says, grinning softly and turning to Derek before adding, “and here I thought I was special. I thought my throat was the only one you wanted to rip out.” 

The vampire laughs, baring a mouthful of teeth, and Stiles can’t help but laugh, too, until they’re both giggling like children for reasons Stiles can’t even really figure out, but she doesn’t care. When they look up to see Derek’s pinched eyebrows and his frowning face, they lose it even more, which only makes Derek scowl harder. 

Derek’s face falls into his open palms, and he sighs, defeated. “This -- whatever this is going to be,” he motions between Stiles and Cassidy with an agitated flick of his hand, “I am _not_ okay with, for the record.”

Yeah, she doesn’t care at all.

…

It’s like deja vu, because sitting here, he can close his eyes and remember it happening just like this, any one of his siblings’ birthday parties: the same big family dinner, everybody packed around a table laden with too much food. Presents, and cake, and birthday wishes, and his mother crying over each one of them even though she always swore she wouldn’t. Every time. The wolf part of Derek feels settled here, calmed by the memory. Maybe because it’s all so achingly familiar, the swirling mix of scents and sounds of a full pack, a _family_.

After dinner and too much cake, everybody takes advantage of the warm summer night, lounging outside to watch the sun set in yolkish oranges and yellows and the slivered moon come up. Joshua’s pack is a good size, a blend of his and his two brothers’ families, so there’s plenty of kids running through the backyard, laughing and growling and snarling playfully, and most everyone else is sprawled in the grass, just watching the sugar-fueled chaos unfold. Derek is still at the table, Charlie perched on his knee and tugging determinedly on his beard like he thinks it's a fake and the kid’s trying his best to prove it. Stiles is beside him, but her attention is mostly on the vampire sitting across from them with his spindly legs thrown up carelessly on another empty chair. She’s started on that list of questions, and Cassidy is humoring her well enough, but Derek’s not sure he realizes just exactly what he’s in for, which is nothing short of an interrogation. 

“Wait, so how old _are_ you exactly?” Stiles asks.

“Born in Dublin City approximately 119 years ago. I’m also a Sagittarius, if you happen to be wonderin’,” Cassidy says, lazily taking a pull off the beer he’s holding in one hand. 

“And you’re immortal?” she prods. “So you can’t die?” 

Cassidy nods and shrugs. “For the most part, yes.” 

“Decapitation?”

“Shockingly, no,” he says, and Stiles just gapes at him. “I’d need help getting put back together, o’course,” he adds, winking conspiratorially. 

“Stake to the heart?” 

“Very uncomfortable. Wood splinters something awful.”

“Garlic?”

“Tasty, but also a complete load of shite.”

“Crosses?”

“Bigger load of shite.” 

“But the sun thing is real,” Stiles prompts, motioning toward the umbrella Cassidy’s still got propped up in the crook of his arm, shading him from the last lingering rays of the sun. 

“Correct. I need the umbrella, otherwise, I burst into flames, see,” Cassidy says, sticking out the hand not currently holding his beer bottle and thrusting it into a dimmer patch of sunlight. Derek watches Stiles’s eyes go wide when the vampire’s jacket begins to smoke and smolder, and the acrid smell of singed flesh starts to saturate the air.

Derek makes a face. “Was that really necessary?”

Stiles rolls her eyes and ignores him, which only makes him want to pout, frustratingly enough. “And the blood-drinking?”

Cassidy grimaces. “Not if I can help it. But if we’re talkin’ mortal injuries, sure, I’d need to indulge.” 

“ _Human blood?”_ Stiles asks.

Cassidy smirks and licks his lips, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. “Why, you offerin'?”

Stiles’s cheeks flush, and Derek growls warningly, baring his teeth in a grimace. Charlie follows suit in his best imitation of a snarl, but it’s considerably less threatening coming from a two-year-old. Cassidy just throws back his head and lets out another ironically barklike laugh. “Relax, Wolf Boy. I’m only jokin’. I much prefer chinese food and single malt, and these days it’s blood bags or furry woodland creatures. I’m not fussed either way. Although,” he adds thoughtfully, “the larger ones tend to stick in the teeth somethin' terrible.” 

Derek can tell Stiles’s mind is probably just as blown as his was the first time he’d met Cassidy. He certainly was an enigma compared to the vampires that his mother and Peter had told him stories about. For one thing, he’s not all that intimidating. Sure, he’s tall and gangly and covered from head to toe in tattoos, but he looks more like some teenage gutterpunk that’s walked straight out of a mosh-pit than he does a bloodthirsty killer. Then again, appearances could be deceiving, Derek thinks, glancing at Stiles who flashes him one of those warm and secret smiles when she notices him staring.

“So, how did you two become _besties?”_ Stiles asks, lip between her teeth in a way that Derek would find incredibly enticing if the question wasn’t so goddamn annoying. 

Derek rolls his eyes. “We are _not_ best fr--” he starts, but doesn’t finish, because Charlie has chosen that moment to start climbing him like his own personal jungle gym. There’s some slapping too, but it’s with all the strength of a butterfly’s wing, even with the added baby werewolf powers. 

“Wolf Boy here saved my life,” Cassidy says, voice laced with an uncomfortable amount of adoration.

Derek feels his face go hot. “It was an accident.”

“How do you accidentally save someone’s life?”

“I was saving myself and he just happened to be there,” Derek grunts, batting Charlie’s claws away from his nose and snapping his teeth, which does nothing but make the toddler giggle. He sees Stiles and Cassidy exchange a knowing look, and he has to stop himself from saying something even ruder. “After that, I couldn’t get rid of him.”

“Aww, come on Wolfy, you were fond of me,” Cassidy ribs, “and I got your back a few times. Remember when I saved us in Chinatown?”

“That was me,” Derek says. 

Cassidy hmms and rubs at his chin thoughtfully. “That time in Hell’s Kitchen? With the Tulpa?”

“Also me,” Derek says, “also _your_ fault.” 

Cassidy just shrugs before tipping back in his chair and chugging the rest of his beer. “At least I learned a valuable lesson in that: don’t buy your psychedelics from the guy living behind the Circle K no matter how good the deal is.”

Stiles is just straight up laughing at this point, not even bothering to hide it, and Derek can’t really blame her because it _is_ ridiculous. “That’s an awful lot of times saving someone who isn’t your friend, Sourwolf.” 

At the nickname, Derek can practically taste the giddiness roll off of Cassidy in waves, so he flashes his eyes at him as if to say, _Don’t you say a fucking word._ The vampire arches an eyebrow at him but throws his hands up in defeat. 

“Because he wouldn’t leave me alone. Imprinted on me like a baby duckling. And it was _Laura_ \--” Derek grits out, as if the admission pains him, and it does but mostly because thinking about her always hurts, just a little, “--who was _fond_ of him.”

Cassidy sighs, and for a second Derek can see it, that flicker of sadness, and it’s hard not to feel it too, that familiar kinship of loss. They didn’t have much of a pack, he and Laura, too raw from grief, and that kind of loneliness, aching and sharp, wore too hard on the few wolves they did associate with. At least Cassidy had been used to it, losing people. Hard not to after a century and change of living the way he did. Derek remembers how Laura had asked him once, why he didn’t just spend all his time with other vampires, other people who couldn’t die. Not like they could, not like humans did. Cassidy had just looked at them like they were the crazy ones for even suggesting it. “ _Do you know what happens to vampires? They go bonkers. Absolutely insane. The lot of them. Humans might be a bit more breakable, Wolf Boy, but they’re not barking mad, at least, for the most part. People ain’t meant to live forever. I wouldn’t recommend it.”_ And when it came to Laura, he only had to take one look at Cassidy’s face to know that for him, she’s still a wound that hasn’t healed, that he still carries around, all painful and exposed, same as Derek. Maybe that’s why, he thinks, they’ll never be rid of each other. Two opposite poles vibrating together at the same miserable frequency. 

And Stiles, bless her, she must pick up on _something_. “Can I see them?” she asks quickly, confusing apparently even Cassidy by how quickly she changes the subject. 

“See what, exactly?”

“She means your fangs, dumbass,” Derek says. Stiles gives him one of those withering stares, looking pointedly at Charlie. “Sorry,” he adds. “I meant, _dumb-cuss.”_

“Is she for real?” Cassidy asks, laughing incredulously.

“Unfortunately.”

The vampire shrugs before baring his teeth in a yawning hiss. 

“Huh,” Stiles says, her head tilted as she leans in to look closer. Which is immediately and entirely too close for Derek’s comfort, every protective instinct he has prickling indignantly because that’s _his mate_ getting all cozy with a dangerous predator. Even though there’s absolutely no hunger in Cassidy’s scent or fear in Stiles’s, Derek can’t help the rumble that tears its way out of his throat. “Derek’s are bigger.” 

“Oh, I bet they are.”

“Shut up,” Derek says, but it’s venomless, and if he sounds like he’s preening, just a little bit, well...He’s never going to admit it. 

Stiles still has that ravenous, inquisitive look on her face, and from the slightly panicked way Cassidy is looking at them both, Derek thinks he’s finally realized the gravity of his situation. Thankfully Derek gets an out, because a literal pack of wolves descends upon them, circling the table and howling dramatically. The wolves just happen to be sticky-fingered, grabby-handed, and child-sized, and they’re yanking on both Derek and Cassidy’s shirts and pant legs trying to get them to come and play, and Derek’s just desperate enough to go with them. 

Derek’s not quite sure how to interpret the beaming smile Stiles offers him when he gets up, leaving Charlie squirming happily in her arms, but he knows it makes his chest ache in the strangest way. “He bites, you know,” he says, leaning in close to press a kiss to Stiles’s forehead before he goes. It’s far too easy for him to feel it here, that naked wanting, the type that makes him yearn for things he knows Stiles isn’t ready for, but he can’t deny the wolf part of him craves down to its very core. 

Stiles just nuzzles against his cheek as he pulls away, murmuring, “That’s okay. So do you.” 

When she looks at him like this, talks to him like this, _touches him like this..._

It doesn’t do a damn thing to help make the craving stop. 

…

Stiles doesn’t have the most experience with kids. She’s an only child, and it’s not like she had cousins to play with growing up, because so were her parents. After her mom died, the few relatives she did know about stopped coming around, and babysitting a bunch of clueless teenage werewolves didn’t leave much room for the possibility of babysitting _actual_ children. Holding Charlie though, with his big, blinking eyes and his doughy, little arms, his joyful, little shrieks as he watches Cassidy make funny faces at him from across the table, she can see the appeal. Even with the claws and the occasional fang that pops out, he’s still cute. 

It’s a little too easy to imagine like this, with that sweet baby smell hitting her nose, Charlie’s flyaway curls ticking her chin, what it would be like -- a kid with bottle-green ocean eyes, golden skin with a smattering of moles, maybe a crop of unruly brown or black hair to go with it. It’s something that she shouldn’t even be thinking about right now, but it’s hard not to, what with Derek being all sweet and handsome and shockingly _good with kids,_ apparently. And maybe it shouldn’t shock her so much. He had a life just like this one once. He was a big brother to a whole mess of siblings growing up. It makes her throat tighten and her stomach turn when she thinks about it, how brutally that part of him was cut out, piece by piece, until there was hardly anything left but the jagged, broken edges of a man that Stiles is still trying her hardest to put back together. She’s not sure she’ll ever be able to make him whole the way he once was, but she can try to make those pieces fit the best she can for him, even if her best is just a mixed up, cobbled-together mosaic of two broken people who, together, somehow didn’t seem quite so broken anymore.

So, sue her if she’s content to just sit back and watch as Derek is chased all over the yard by screaming kids, grinning goofily to herself as she watches as he lets them pin him to the ground and climb all over him, showing off his fangs and roaring theatrically in a way that for some reason seems to reduce them all to giggles every time, no matter how many times he does it. Who can blame her for feeling this way when it’s hard enough for her to look away from Derek on a normal day. Add him running around and playing with a bunch of adorable werewolf children, and her poor ovaries never stood a chance.

“You might wanna close your mouth, pet,” a voice beside her drawls, “you’re gonna get drool all over the poor little lad there.” Cassidy’s expression is irritatingly knowing and she kind of gets in that moment why Derek wants to punch him all the time, just a little. 

Stiles hears her voice go embarrassingly shrill. “I wasn’t drooling.” 

She was, she definitely was.

“Eh, even if you weren’t,” Cassidy says with a smirk and a shrug, “ _the nose knows_ .” He taps the side of his nose as he says it, revealing the multitude of tattoos etched almost like chicken scratch all over his hand. There doesn’t seem to be much of him that _isn’t_ covered in ink.

And god, she’s never hated her emotions more in her entire life. “Apparently I can’t help it,” Stiles says, scowling. “Derek says it’s what I smell like all the time anyway, so get used to it, I guess.” 

Cassidy snickers. “Oh, I bet you drive him up the fucking wall, pet. You’re doing God’s work, you are.”

“I don’t _mean_ to,” Stiles says in a small voice, covering her face with her free hand to hide her seemingly ever-increasing blush. “I mean, _most_ of the time.” 

“Oh, quit teasing her, Cassidy.” Stiles looks up to see Astrid grinning, her hands on her hips, and Charlie immediately starts wiggling so hard that he nearly falls right off Stiles’s lap. He coos, “ _Mama_!” and makes grabby hands until his mother swoops down and pulls him into her arms, giving him an exaggerated kiss on the side of his head. “They’re young and in love.”

“You can’t see because of these cool shades, but I’m rolling my eyes here,” Cassidy says.

Astrid just chuckles, bouncing Charlie on her hip while trying, mostly in vain, to keep his hands away from her hair, which the boy seems determined to both yank and chew on at the same time.

They’re all just quiet for a moment, and Stiles watches Astrid’s expression, following her eyes as the woman ogles her own personal werewolf, because Joshua’s in the thick of it right along with Derek, at least two kids hanging off his back like tiny monkeys, clamoring all over him and pulling on his clothes with exuberant shrieks when he jokingly tries to shake them off. Astrid looks just as moon-brained as Stiles feels watching the whole thing, so it makes her feel slightly vindicated that she’s not the only one losing her mind over the sheer adorableness happening here. 

The combined scent of their overbearing affections must be a little much for Cassidy, because he gags dramatically before getting to his feet, motioning at Astrid to hand over the baby. 

“You don’t have to, Cassidy,” Astrid says. “I thought you were taking the night off.”

“Oh, I’d much rather suffer through bathtime than stay here with the Banger Sisters,” Cassidy says, shaking his head. Charlie growls when his mother lets go of him, and Stiles watches, shocked, as the kid just rears back and sinks his sharp little fangs into Cassidy’s bare wrist. Cassidy doesn’t even flinch, either. Just laughs and throws the kid over his shoulder like a sack of tiny werewolf potatoes and heads toward the house, raising his free hand in a farewell salute. 

Stiles guesses she understands it now, the need for an essentially unbreakable babysitter. 

Astrid returns to her staring, but Stiles is distracted as usual. 

“Do you ever get used to it?” Stiles asks. “Being with one of them -- I mean, um --" and she flounders here for a second because she doesn’t just mean _sex_ , but everything, and it’s not something she’s sure she can even explain in a way that makes sense. How even after all this time, when Derek looks at her, it feels like getting hit by a runaway train. It knocks her straight to her feet every time. And surely it’s got to be a werewolf thing, at least some of it, because one person should not have so much power to bring her to her knees like this without something being supernaturally responsible. 

Astrid must get it a little though, because her expression is kind, and she doesn’t laugh when she answers Stiles’s garbled question. “No, not really. Joshua still makes me feel like my feet are stuck to the floor when he kisses me and we’ve been together for fifteen years now.” The older woman trails off wistfully, and Stiles watches the path of the other woman’s hand as she yanks on the collar of her own shirt, absentmindedly tracing the skin underneath, and that’s when Stiles sees it, the scar, blindingly, shockingly white against Astrid’s dark complexion. And Stiles recognizes the shape instantly because she’s seen an approximation of it in the bruises on her own skin so many times now -- teeth. 

“I thought the bite didn’t leave a scar,” Stiles says automatically, realizing only a half-second later how completely nosey she’s being. 

Astrid actually blushes. “It’s not that kind of bite.” 

Stiles just blinks at her, confused. The way Astrid’s talking, it’s like she expects Stiles to know that already. “I mean, I just thought all that heals, you know, when you turn.”

“It’s a claiming bite,” Astrid says, her voice going a little high and squeaky. “Um, it’s for alpha mates. It doesn’t heal like a turning bite because, well, it’s not supposed to --"

Ah, Stiles thinks. So it _is_ a wolf thing. “I’m not planning on getting turned -- I mean, unless something happens, so,” and then she shrugs as if to say, _it is what it is, and that’s that._ She’s got to get used to it anyway, Stiles thinks, because there are some things she just won’t ever get to know about, won’t ever really understand with all that pesky humanity in the way. 

“I never planned on it either, but then I got sick,” Astrid says softly. “But I was human, when he, um, you know,” she says, motioning to her collarbone where Stiles can now just barely see the mark peeking out from her curtain of black hair. 

Now this. This is a revelation that shocks her because it feels important. Feels like something Derek ought to have told her about. And now she has a thousand more questions. Like why didn’t Derek tell her? Why hasn’t he asked? Is he going to? Does it mean something that he hasn’t?

It’s kind of hard to hide that kind of freakout from a werewolf, so she’s not surprised when Astrid reaches over to pat her hand sympathetically. “Go easy on him, if you can,” she says, jerking her head in Derek’s direction like she can read exactly what Stiles is thinking. “He might play the big strong alpha on TV if you know what I mean, but Derek’s still just a man. I think he forgets that sometimes.” 

Stiles can’t really argue with that, and she feels that same creeping guilt as before because she should understand that better than anyone.

“He’s different with you.”

“I know.” The Derek she’d stumbled upon in the woods that day, he’d been hard and mean, and now that she can see it for what it is, looking back, _afraid --_ snapping at her like a dog that had been kicked so many times it had come to expect it. Sure, he’d let her in, eventually, but it had been the farthest thing from easy for either of them, and it’s still happening, little by little, every moment of every day. It exhausts him sometimes, she can see that. So can she really fault Derek for having his secrets? Still, she can’t help but ask, “But different...um, _good, right?”_

“Different _happy_.” 

Stiles smiles at Astrid this time, because even she knows without a doubt, _that’s true_.

The moment to appreciate this, however, is cut short, because suddenly Derek and Joshua are standing right in front of them, Q on Derek’s shoulders, waving his little clawed hands around excitedly. “Mom, mom, mom,” he says insistently, “we’re going to run! Come with us!” 

Stiles is quiet, still thinking over everything they’ve talked about, and she thinks she can feel Derek’s eyes on her like she always can. When she looks up, she can see she’s right -- he’s looking at her curiously like he’s trying to read her mind, and yet again, she takes comfort in the simple fact that he can’t. He smiles at her though, and it’s so warm and _happy_ , just like Astrid said, that she can’t help but beam back at him. 

“Aww,” Astrid says, getting up to press a kiss to her son’s cheek (the boy makes a face, but even Stiles can see it’s an act. She doesn’t need the ability to read chemosignals to see Q loves the attention). “I wish I could, baby, but it’s Charlie’s bedtime, and Cassidy always gets him so riled up when he puts him to bed.” 

The boy’s face falls, but before he can open his mouth to bargain, his sister appears seemingly out of nowhere, again. “I can do it, mom.”

“Okay, sweetie. If you’re sure…” 

And Stiles doesn’t quite understand the little crease in Astrid's brow, or the tiniest of frowns just curling down the edges of her mouth, but it doesn’t stop Stiles from blurting out, “Um -- I can help, too?”

Shelley and Astrid both actually look grateful, so that’s something at least. 

“You don’t want to come with us? I’m sure Derek’d like that,” Joshua asks, grinning in a far-too-obvious way.

“I’m not into running unless I’m being chased,” Stiles says sweetly, and she might’ve meant it innocently (at first), but the way Derek’s eyes go wide and his ears start to turn a little red at the tips just kills her, and she can’t help but throw him a wink. 

“Well,” Astrid says, clapping her hands, “that’s settled, then.”

Derek and Joshua exchange identical mischievous grins (which, god is it a trip to see Derek smile so damn much. She’s pretty sure she never wants it to stop) before Q hops off Derek’s shoulders with a rather impressive barrel roll. Then the two alphas immediately start shedding their clothes, and Stiles blushes reflexively, but she knows she’s probably the only one because werewolves and casual nudity just seemed to go hand in hand. It is just as mesmerizing though, watching the shift take hold of Derek, but even stranger still watching Joshua change right along with him. There’s that high-frequency hum that always makes her ears ring, and then there’s only him, _her wolf,_ radiating power, as towering and breathtaking as the first time she saw him shift.

The other alpha’s shift is impressive too -- he’s _huge_ , even bigger than Derek, with fur so white it’s practically blinding, stark against those crimson eyes, that shade that has become so familiar to her. The two wolves seem to just stare at each other for a long moment like they’re talking to each other without actually saying anything before they both raise their noses to the sky and let out the loudest howls that Stiles thinks she’s ever heard (and frankly, she’s heard quite a few) before they both dart off toward the woods. Quentin yips in delight, pulling his mother along with him as he runs after the pair, the other children, and most of the other adults following close behind. Stiles can’t help laughing, because the joy is infectious -- she doesn’t have to even be a wolf to feel it. At the edge of the trees, Derek turns to look at her, baring his teeth in that wolfish grin, and she gives him a small wave as he slips into the underbrush. 

Stiles isn’t exactly sure how much help she’ll really be, but Shelley doesn’t seem to mind. The silence between them isn’t weird, surprisingly, so Stiles just tags along for the ride, basically, watching passively as Shelley gets her little brother ready for bed. It’s only after they’re shutting the door to the nursery that the younger girl actually speaks to her at all. 

“You’re wondering why I didn’t go with them, right?” 

Stiles just blinks for a long moment, because it’s not the question she was expecting, mostly because it was completely and entirely accurate. It’s a shockingly astute observation for a preteen, she thinks. “Um, well, yeah, but you don’t have to tell -- “

“Astrid and Joshua, they’re not really my parents,” Shelley says, biting her lip and fiddling with her sleeve. “I mean, they are now, and I love them, but -- I was adopted. I had parents, and a pack, you know, before -- “

“Oh,” Stiles says, because she’s not sure what else she should say. “And that’s why you don’t -- “

“I don’t shift if I can help it,” Shelley blurts out. Stiles doesn’t even have to ask why not, because the girl turns to look at her, and in the span of a blink, she’s flashing ice-blue eyes and suddenly Stiles understands completely. “Hunters killed my parents, and the rest of my pack, shot them with wolfsbane bullets. They died instantly, but my little brother, he, um, _lingered_ , and I had to -- “

She’s not sure why, but it feels like she should say something, anything, because the other girl is clearly starting to flounder a little. “Derek’s eyes are blue too. I mean, they used to be. I know a lot of wolves, actually, with that color. I always thought -- “ and Stiles takes a breath here, makes her smile as warm and inviting as she can before finishing, “I always thought blue was pretty. Derek’s are red now, but I kind of miss the blue.” 

She’s not sure if it’s helpful at all to offer, but it _is_ the truth, and maybe it means something that Shelley is smiling softly back at her as they make their way back outside. 

“Thanks,” Shelley says quietly before they both sit down on the rickety porch steps to wait for the others to come back.

Well, that _is_ something, at least. 

…

It’s not like Derek isn’t used to running with a pack these days. Sure, they were a little untrained, a strange hodgepodge of ragtag teenagers, but they _were_ pack. Maybe not quite like his family, not yet. But getting there, getting stronger every day (Stiles would say because of him, but he knows better. If anything, it was _her)._ Still, there was something about running with Joshua’s family. A pack tied together by the bonds of blood that was somehow deeper than the threads clumsily stitched together by the bite. But most of all, running with the pack, _it’s fun_. And that fact alone is strange, because it feels kind of wrong, like putting on a new pair of shoes that haven’t been broken in yet, or trying to take a step on legs that have fallen asleep, all pins and needles. It’s something he’s still relearning, little by little, with Stiles’s help. 

It's too easy to lose track of everything but this, the rhythm of feet and paws hitting the ground in tandem, the wind in his fur, the taste of the forest hitting the back of his throat as he breathes it in. Derek runs and runs and runs, following Joshua’s trail deeper and deeper through the trees, steadily gaining speed until his surroundings are nothing more than blurs in his peripheral vision. The sun is nearly fully set by the time he stops, the sky almost completely dark except for the orangey brass smudging the horizon line and casting shadows over the mountains in the distance. His lungs are still burning when he shifts back, rising on two legs and striding to the top of the hill where the other alpha is waiting, the older man perched lazily on a boulder and gazing up at the stars just beginning to blink through the curtain of twilight. 

“Took you long enough,” Joshua says. “I think you’ve gotten slower.” On the man’s face, the barest hint of a lupine grin catches in the moonlight reflecting off his bared teeth.

“Maybe I let you win,” Derek drawls, arms crossed as he gazes down into the valley. “Age before beauty and all.” 

Joshua snorts, and for a moment they say nothing, watching the blanket of night spread over them, listening to the crickets and the somber warbling of the whip-poor-wills roosting in the trees above them. Derek almost forgot what this was like, to really revel in it, _the wolf_ , running just to feel free, to feel grounded, just to _feel_ , rather than to escape, both from real enemies and the imaginary ones he carried around like dead weight in his head. 

“I like her.”

Derek blinks owlishly at the other man for a moment, askance, but when he finally understands what the other alpha’s talking about, the smile that spreads over his face is automatic. “I know. I -- I love her.”

“But you haven’t claimed her.”

Ah, moment over, apparently, and that smile slides right off Derek’s now-pinched face and straight onto the floor. “I’m marrying her, aren’t I?”

“That’s not the same and you know it.”

Joshua is right. It’s not the same. It’s a shallow human ritual, albeit an important one, to them at least, chock-full of human meaning and significance, but it wasn’t the same as a claiming bite. Not to the wolf. Not to him. 

“It’s dangerous. She’s human.” 

The older man just shakes his head as if Derek’s words are the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. “Astrid was human.”

Derek growls, but Joshua hardly reacts. “I’m not you. If anyone was going to fuck something like that up, it’d be me. I don’t -- I can’t trust myself not to fuck it up. Not like my track record is all that great.” 

“You’re not fourteen anymore, Derek. Stiles is strong, and she’s good. Maybe you made the wrong choice before, but not this time.” The older alpha leans back, stretching his long limbs and sighing wearily as if he’s explaining something simple to a small child who still doesn’t get it. “You’re different with her, you know,” he adds quietly.

As if Derek didn’t already know that literally _everything_ has been different since Stiles came along. Still, the question comes out anyway, if only because he needs to hear the answer said out loud, even when he knows already that it’s true. “Good different?”

“What do you think?” Joshua asks, and Derek should’ve known better than to expect an obvious answer. Always pulling that Yoda shit. 

“I’ve never -- wanted to be good for somebody the way I want to, you know, _for her,_ ” Derek says, shutting his eyes and breathing deeply as if to steady himself. “She’s not...she’s not just a good thing. She’s my _best_ thing.” It’s embarrassing to admit if only because it’s the most nakedly and emotionally honest thing he’s probably said out loud to someone who _wasn’t_ Stiles, at least not since his sister was still breathing. 

“Well,” Joshua says, shrugging. “I guess you have your answer then.” Clearly the conversation is over, because Derek watches as the air around the man trembles like the shaking leaves of an aspen tree, hears the cracks and pops of the man's joints rearranging until he rises up into that great, white wolf, leaping off the rock and howling so loud that the ground shakes with the force of it.

“Yeah,” Derek says softly, shuddering as the same bolt of power surges through him, vibrating in his nervous system like an echo. “I guess so.” 

After that, there is only the wolf, at least for a little while longer. 

It’s nearly midnight by the time he circles back to the house, and Derek can already smell her when he slips back into his human skin and lopes across the lawn toward the front door, chasing that milky cinnamon sweetness that fills his lungs that he never can quite get enough of. Stiles is asleep on the porch swing, a blanket thrown over her legs, and he feels a little bad for making her wait so long since it looks like almost everyone else has long since gone to bed. Still, he wrinkles his nose a little when he finally gets close enough to smell the other lingering strange scents that don’t quite offend, but still make him uneasy purely out of instinct -- other wolves, and _vampire_. Stiles doesn’t stir when he gathers her up in his arms, not at first, but he can tell by the time they reach the guest room that she’s awake despite the closed eyes, because her quickening breath coupled with her heartbeat always gives her away. 

So he doesn’t feel bad when after laying her gently on the bed, he crawls in after her and starts the thoroughly detailed process of marking her with scent, rubbing his coarse beard hair against her throat before making a slow, meticulous journey down her body.

“ _Derek!_ Not the scruff,” Stiles whines, squirming underneath him. “What are you doing, crazy wolf? _Get off me, weirdo._ ”

Derek knows she doesn’t mean it, because he can hear the giggles lacing her words, and she’s really not trying that hard to get away. “You smell bad. I’m fixing it,” he murmurs against her knees before nosing determinedly at the backs of them.

“Excuse you, but I smell fantastic,” Stiles says loftily, though the words break off shrilly in her throat when he bites down on her calf and she starts to kick at him. 

“You smell like other wolves,” Derek scowls, gazing up at her, “ _and the vampire_.”

“Ah,” Stiles says, staring knowingly up at the ceiling and making a soft sound like everything’s clicked into place, “so you’re a _jealous_ wolf now, is that it?” 

Derek rolls his eyes. “I’m not jealous of Cassidy,” he says, wondering if he sounds as offended to her as he feels at the sentiment.

“Sure you aren’t, Sourwolf.” 

He can hear the shit-eating grin in her voice and she’s definitely laughing at him a little but he doesn’t care. He’ll sacrifice a little bit of dignity for the sake of his nose. In retaliation, he nips at her ankle, dodging the knee-jerk reaction of her leg jumping off the bed that probably would’ve left a pretty impressive black eye if it weren’t for his reflexes. 

“Since you’re down there,” Stiles says, sounding a little breathless, “you could make yourself useful.”

Derek laughs and shakes his head, though it isn’t like he isn’t tempted because she _always_ tempts him. How could she not? “That’s a terrible idea, baby. We’re in a house full of werewolves. Super hearing, remember?” 

Stiles frowns. “Are you implying I’m loud?”

“That’s exactly what I’m implying.”

 _“I can be quiet,”_ Stiles says haughtily, and Derek’s annoyed at how good that little pout looks gracing her mouth. 

“If I gagged you, maybe,” Derek retorts, though regrets this almost immediately when he literally tastes it, the cloying lust that suddenly pours off of her in a wave, bursting sweetly on the back of his tongue and making him groan. “That wasn’t a suggestion, Stiles,” he adds with an irritated growl. Always testing him. _Goading him, more like_. 

“I guess you’re right,” she says, sighing as she flops back on the bed. Eying her suspiciously, Derek thinks he really should be less surprised by what she does next when he watches as her eyes go bright with that troublingly mischievous glint. “I’m just a slave, powerless to your enormous alpha werewolf dick. Take me, take me!” she says in a booming and exaggerated voice that is very obviously not going to be missed in a house full of people who could literally hear a pin drop.

“Oh my god,” Derek hisses, though he’s nearly laughing as hard as Stiles is (hers slightly muffled now against the palm he’d slammed hastily over her mouth). “Has anyone ever told you what an enormous freak you are?” 

Stiles nips at his hand until he pulls it away before answering all matter-of-fact, “Yes, you. All the time.” 

She’s still giggling when Derek flashes his eyes at her with a playful snarl before pinning her to the bed, tickling her roughly below the ribs until she’s squealing underneath him. “You’re _such_ a brat.”

Stiles just flutters her lashes at him, acting all innocent, as if she has _no_ idea what he’s talking about.

Eventually, they calm down enough to where the tickling and teasing becomes something else, lazy kisses and the scrape of teeth -- Derek sucking and licking, freshening up the marks starting to fade on her shoulders and her throat until she’s trembling underneath him, whining for it. Derek’s pretty sure if he wanted to, he could make her beg, but as he’d said before: _not tonight_. 

“ _Mean_ ,” Stiles grumbles when Derek finally pulls away, smirking as he places an apologetic kiss to her forehead. 

“Cassidy can never know what it sounds like when we have sex,” Derek says, shuddering slightly, trying to ignore the possessive fury that licks at his veins at the mere thought of somebody else getting to hear those sweet little sounds she makes. “Now,” he starts, glancing at the digital clock on the bedside table, “there’s still five minutes until midnight, baby. Do you want to spend it opening your present, or are you planning on pouting for the remainder of your birthday?”

He can tell by her expression that she’d forgotten all about it, so when he mentions the gift, Stiles perks up immediately. “Present, please,” she says quickly, shoving playfully at Derek’s shoulder until he lets her up and she scrambles onto her knees, making those adorable grabby hands at him that make it extremely difficult to untangle himself from her long enough to get it.

“Close your eyes and hold out your hand,” he instructs once he sits down on the bed. He sees that flash of suspicion flicker over her face, and she hesitates for just a moment. “Just do it,” he insists softly, and to his surprise, Stiles complies (for once, he thinks) with minimal complaining. 

He’s quick but gentle when he winds the corded bracelet he’s been carrying in his pocket since they got here around her slender wrist, remembering briefly as he holds it delicately between his fingers how worried he’d been once, that he’d break it just by touching her too hard. Now he worries about breaking her for entirely different reasons. It’s a little cracked, the black leather a bit faded with age and wear, but the little blue stones threaded through it, the silver pendant with the triskelion he’d etched so long ago with his claws, they’re still that same brilliant hue, bright and shiny, untouched, it seemed, by time and tragedy, so unlike the rest of him. 

When he’s finished, Stiles opens her eyes and for a moment says nothing, gazing down at her wrist with an expression that he doesn’t quite know how to read, to be honest. There’s a little smile that he thinks is fond, but there’s also a curious crease in between her delicate eyebrows that sort of worries him. 

“Oh, Derek -" she murmurs. “The ring was already so much, it’s so beautiful, you didn’t have to --"

“Are we going to do this every time I give you something?” Derek huffs, exasperated. “I didn’t buy it. I _made it_.”

Stiles blinks at him. “You made this? For me?” 

“It was Laura’s. I made it for her a long time ago,” he starts, shifting nervously under Stiles's suddenly intense gaze. “When my eyes changed, she - she and my mother always used to say that they, uh, they liked them just as much as the old ones…” It was why he’d chosen those beads made of Lapis Lazuli, the closest approximation to that shocking blue he could find in nature. He’d made an identical one for his mother, but that was long gone, lost along with the rest of her, obviously. It’s not something he wants to dwell on right now, so he does his best to shake that thought, cracking his fingers nervously to distract himself. “She’d left it the last time we were here,” he finishes with a shrug. 

Stiles doesn’t speak, because of course she always chooses these moments when he desperately needs her to say something, anything, to stay quiet. But the distraction she does offer him ends up being better, because suddenly he’s got a lap full of her, warm and soft and perfect, and he expects to catch her mouth, but Stiles leans in to nuzzle at his throat instead, offering the barest brush of lips against his skin. Derek has to clench his jaw almost immediately to quell the needy sound that threatens to fly out. “Thank you,” she mumbles sweetly into his shoulder. 

Derek swallows so loudly he’s positive she hears it. “You’re welcome. I figured you needed something old, borrowed, and blue, right? This definitely covers it.” 

“Definitely,” she says, nosing at his cheek. "Best birthday ever." 

"Mmm," he agrees, though he thinks his might still have hers beat by just a little. 

…

They sleep uncharacteristically late, waking lazily to the sound of plates and silverware clinking, bustling noise in the kitchen as what sounds like the entire pack congregates in a far-to-small nook to eat breakfast together. 

When Stiles first opens her eyes, Derek’s are closed, and she takes a moment to appreciate that loose, relaxed look on his face she rarely gets to see. No worry lines between his brows, just the fluttering behind his eyelids and quiet breaths from his slack-jawed mouth. Even in sleep, he’s pretty, she thinks, and then suddenly there’s only one thing on her mind now as she watches him and feels that familiar heat coiling in her belly. She’s thinking about how those long, twitchy fingers tangled in the messy strands of her hair against the pillow would feel curled inside her right now. _Not a good idea, baby_ is what Derek’s voice in her head whispers pointedly. Yes, he’d said no sex, but he hadn’t specified about _other things_ she could or couldn’t do. That’s what Stiles is trying to convince herself as she slides her hand down her stomach, squirming a little until she can just --

“Please don’t do what I think you’re going to do.” Derek’s voice is all low and gravelly, his breath hot enough against her ear to make her shiver. 

“I wasn’t,” she says breathlessly. “I was just stretching.” 

“Mhhm,” Derek says because she knows he doesn’t believe her of course, nor should he, but it doesn’t make her tremble any less when his teeth nip at her neck in warning. “It’s too early for you to be this bratty.”

“It’s not early,” Stiles answers glibly. "Everybody else is already awake.” 

“All the more reason for you to behave,” Derek grumbles, and Stiles is about to argue with him but she doesn’t get the chance because Derek, the pinnacle of maturity that he is, has rolled them until she’s pinned under his ridiculously heavy bulk.

“And you say _I’m_ not a morning person,” she mutters, though it’s hard to complain too much when Derek’s nuzzling into her shoulder like this, and she gets to wind her fingers through his sleep-tousled black hair. 

Bedhead Derek is one of her favorite Dereks. 

They finally make it downstairs to say their goodbyes, and Stiles doesn’t feel like all the staring is completely justified because they really _didn’t_ do anything, honest. But that doesn’t stop both her and Derek from turning absolutely crimson when Cassidy makes a point to say he’d miss her and Derek’s, “ _what was it you called it, pet? Ah yes, his enormous alpha werewolf dick_.” 

“I hate you so much,” Derek mumbles under his breath as they walk to the car, though he’s still holding Stiles’s hand while she waves goodbye to everyone else with the other, so he can’t really be too upset, she thinks. 

“You don’t,” she answers, giving his hand a gentle squeeze, “but I did just invite them all to the wedding, so maybe you can hate me just a little actually, and I’d totally understand.” 

“No,” Derek says, sighing resignedly and shaking his head as they roll out of the driveway. “I should, but I really, really don’t.”

To her credit, she does make it the whole ride home without bringing up the question that’s been a flashing neon sign in her brain since last night, since Astrid’s _I was human_ revelation. Since she saw that scar, white and shiny, on the older woman’s collarbone, Stiles hasn’t been able to stop imagining what a mark like that might look like, might feel like, etched onto her own skin. She can’t stop thinking about it, because she’s pretty sure she’s suddenly never wanted anything more and she has no idea why. 

She’s still thinking later, sprawled out on her bed while Derek sits in the armchair across from her, sketching with sluggish strokes of his pencil like he’s not doing such a great job concentrating either. So, to his credit, he doesn’t look that surprised when Stiles finally can’t hold the question in any longer, blurting it out in a typical show of grace and tact.

“Why won’t you claim me?” 

Derek sighs (big surprise, Stiles thinks), his pencil falling with a loud thud onto his sketchbook. “You talked to Astrid.” It’s not a question, the way he says it. 

Stiles nods, because no point in denying it. “She said it’s something for -- something alphas do. To their mates. That’s me, right? I'm one of those. So why haven’t you?” And she hates that she can see that the question pains him, and she hates herself even more because it still isn’t enough to make her want to stop asking it.

Derek’s jaw is doing that pulsing thing, and when he finally answers her, she can hear him attempting to speak through his mostly clenched teeth. “Biting you like that is dangerous. Most alphas don’t mate with humans, since they're so…"

"Breakable?" Stiles finishes, frowning.

Derek nods, because doesn’t she know it’s hard enough for him? That he struggles enough as it is not to go too far, struggles not to sink his teeth into her like his instincts are begging him to do? 

“But Joshua did it. And -- and so did your mother,” Stiles says softly, wincing a little when she sees another flash of pain, albeit a different kind, flit across Derek’s face when she mentions Talia. “Astrid told me that too,” she adds, looking guiltily at her feet. 

“I’m not like them. I’m not -- I don’t trust myself not to fuck it up. History kind of implies I'm not exactly doing that great when it comes to pretty much any of this.” 

“Don’t say that,” Stiles says firmly. “You’re a good alpha, Derek.” 

“The last girl I loved who got bit _died_ , Stiles. You really want to try your luck with me?” 

“This isn’t like that. You’re not going to turn me,” Stiles answers, clenching her hands in frustration. 

“But I could. And if I fuck up, do it accidentally, you’ll reject it because it’s not what you want.” And he doesn’t have to finish the thought for Stiles to know where he’s headed with it. _You’ll die and leave me all alone_ . But she isn’t dead, is the thing. She’s right here, right now, _alive_ , and she’s not made of glass or porcelain. Not meant to be like some china doll sat up on a shelf, never played with. That’s _not her_.

“I’m not a dead girl, Derek. So stop looking at me like I’m one.” 

“That’s not funny, Stiles,” Derek says, voice hollow. “Don’t joke about that.” 

“I’m not,” Stiles snaps. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“You just don’t get it, do you?” The laugh he lets out is bitter and cold and makes her go cold too at the sound of it reverberating through her quiet bedroom. “If I lose you, I don’t come back from that, Stiles. That’s it for me. I couldn’t -- I couldn’t do it. Maybe that makes me a coward to admit, but it’s true.”

It’s not like a part of her didn’t know that, subconsciously, at least a little. But the admission still hits her like a bolt to the chest, makes her heart ache because she knows it’s not something she can ever truly understand, the sheer magnitude of loss he’s endured. But the shameful truth is even that’s not enough for her to give up what she wants, and how fucking selfish does that make her? 

She could keep arguing with him. They could argue until the veritable cows came home, and they have before, but Stiles doesn’t want that for either one of them. So she just takes a deep, shuddering breath and goes for the simplest tactic: _honesty_.

“I may not want to turn,” she starts, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to tie myself to you in every way possible.”

Derek's teeth click as his jaw tightens, but she notices his hardened expression soften, just a bit. “Please don’t ask me to do this, Stiles.” It’s a naked plea. She hears it in his voice, _desperation_. 

Is it cruel of her to ask? Maybe. But she’d bet her life she wasn’t the only one between them who wants this. She can’t be, can she? Is the reason he’s asking her not to because he wants to just as badly? “Will you try?” she whispers, “try for me?” 

Derek doesn’t say anything, just watches her for a long, stretched moment of torturous silence, and she can see how jumpy and restless he’s getting, watches him crack his knuckles to keep his claws at bay. Knows that he’s probably grinding his teeth into dust at this point. When his gaze anxiously flits to the window, she sighs but can’t bring herself to begrudge him what she knows he wants. She’s asking a lot, probably too much, she knows that. She can’t fault him for needing time to process.

“Go ahead,” Stiles murmurs and watches, resigned, as Derek prowls to the window to give in to that instinct to run when he feels cornered (and even she can admit that’s exactly what she’s done, _cornered him)_. “Just come back,” she adds, offering him a forced smile to hide the nervousness in her voice, like she might actually be a little bit worried he won’t. 

But Derek is Derek, she reminds herself, and she isn’t proven wrong when he reaches out to cup her cheek almost apologetically and whispers, “Always," before leaping off her roof and disappearing.

And he does come back that night, when she’s only half awake, and she feels him curl around her back, his arms wrapping around her and pulling her close enough to bury his face in her hair like the scent of it is exactly what he needs “I’ll try,” he whispers, and those are the last words she hears before sleep takes her.

  
  


The next day, Stiles is antsy throughout the entirety of her shift at the station. Because all she can think about is _Derek_ , what it’s going to feel like when he does it, sinks his teeth into her for real. Her fingers keep finding her throat, skimming her collarbones like they’re already searching for a mark that isn’t even there yet. She must’ve really been driving her dad crazy, tapping her foot and squirming in her seat, because it’s not even officially 5 o’clock when he drops the files in his hand onto the desk with a loud, pointed _thwap_ , and she’s jerked out of her fantasy, cheeks flushed and biting her lip in obvious embarrassment. 

“I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to,” her father says, rubbing his eyes. “But you’re driving me nuts, so please just go before you wear a hole in the floor.” 

Stiles nearly falls over, that’s how fast she gets up, kissing her father on the cheek and hightailing it out of there before he really does start asking questions. Because honestly, she wouldn’t even know how to begin to answer any of them. She doesn’t speed to the loft, because hello, she doesn’t need a lecture from her father _and_ Derek if she gets caught, but it’s close. She knows Derek can hear her approaching because her car’s not quiet after all, but she wonders how well he can hear her heartbeat too because it’s hammering in her ears, so to him it must seem deafening. How is it even after all this time together he can still give her heart palpitations and butterflies?

She’s barely pulled her key out of the lock and shut the door behind her before she finds herself pinned against it. Her heart skips, but it’s not fear, because her body recognizes the feel of his practically on instinct -- the familiar weight of him pressed against her back, the prickly hairs of his beard that somehow manage to scratch her even through the fabric of her shirt, his big hands spread possessively around her hips. No words yet, but Stiles doesn’t think he needs them when the way he’s growling at the back of her neck tells her exactly what’s happening. 

“Now?” she asks, inhaling sharply when his hand finds her hair and yanks back on it to reveal more of her throat. 

“Now,” Derek mumbles and doesn’t say anything more, just pulls at the neck of her shirt so he can continue his earnest examination of every inch of her now-bared shoulder. 

When she tries to reach back and touch him, he growls at her again, threading their fingers together and pressing them back against the wall. If there’s more to say (and maybe there should be), they don’t bother saying it. Derek must take her silence for tacit agreement, because he just keeps mouthing at that vein that runs down the side of her throat, scraping his teeth over it until she’s got goosebumps all up and down her arms from shivering so hard.

Then Stiles suddenly understands: yes, he’s going to try, but if he does, it’s going to be his way or not at all. 

And honestly, she’s fine with that.

 _So fine with it_.

... 

He’s been on edge all day just waiting, steeling himself for this, doing whatever he could to keep that fire in his veins cooking at a simmer rather than a raging inferno destined to leave him all burnt up, and maybe her along with it. To say it’s been difficult is an understatement, Derek thinks, especially since he’d said those two words, made that promise of “I’ll try,” Stiles has smelled so much like needy desperation in a way she never has before that it feels like she’s torturing him even though he knows it’s not on purpose (never on purpose). Derek might be wary of the idea of finally claiming her, but the wolf part of him is all in, going mad with hunger and dragging him right along with it. So when he hears her coming, that scent getting stronger and stronger the closer she gets until he’s drowning in it, the choice he makes to pin her to the wall doesn’t seem like a choice at all. Rather, an inevitability. 

When she tries to touch him, he holds her back, makes quick work of her clothes with one clawed hand while the other holds her fast against the wall until she’s naked and perfectly beautiful in front of him.

“ _Derek_ .” He hears her say his name, but it sounds far away, all soft and quiet and not enough to drag him back from where he’s buried his face in between her shoulder blades, licking his way furiously up her spine. _“Why can’t I touch you? Please, I want to touch you.”_

There’s that voice in his head that sounds so much more human than he feels right now that’s trying to remind him: _gentle, careful, control, control, control_ , but it’s so hard to listen to when her heartbeat sounds so loud it’s like someone’s hitting him over the head with it. “Because when you touch me,” Derek murmurs, gripping her by the hips and spinning her around so he can finally catch her mouth with his in a kiss that’s almost as bruising as his hands on her, “I can’t think straight. Need to think straight.” 

Stiles whines in protest against his lips but he’s too entranced with the taste of her to care, biting her lip until it’s red and swollen. When he falls to his knees, he feels her start to shake a little like she already knows what’s coming, and maybe she does because she doesn’t even try to jerk away from him when his mouth closes over her cunt and he plunges his tongue into all that waiting, wet heat. 

“ _Oh, god, holy -- fuck,”_ Stiles cries out, and Derek growls against her, pulling back to nip harshly at her thigh in warning when she buries her fingers in his hair and starts to pull. Stiles lets out this choked sort of hiccupy sound, but she lets go and he hears her scratching her fingers uselessly against the concrete behind her. 

He hadn’t meant to break the skin, but he’s suddenly mesmerized by the droplet of blood that’s trailing lazily down her thigh, and he has to stop to lick it up with feverish strokes of his tongue, trying to ignore the lust that flares in Stiles’s scent like a flashbulb going off when he finally looks up to meet her eyes with his red, shifted gaze. He’s rough and relentless, maybe _too_ rough, that sensible part of his brain tries to needle at him, but he can’t stop, not now.

“God, Derek, you’re so --," he hears her start to say, but the words break off when his lips close over her clit and he sucks that bud into his mouth, groaning at the sinful mix of tastes, her blood and cum, until she’s screaming and thrashing over his head, and he has to pin her by the hips so she doesn’t accidentally knock him out with those sharp-boned knees of hers. 

She’s close. He can feel it in the way she’s suddenly so tight around his tongue, pulsing against his mouth and flooding it with her slick. Stiles is panting too, her breath coming fast, and when she topples over that edge he can hear the exact moment she breaks when the air gets pushed right out of her lungs in a fractured scream. He doesn’t stop though, curling his tongue up inside her, flicking it insistently over her folds like he’s lapping up every drop, and he is because he _needs to_. 

Her fingers are back now, pawing frantically at his scalp, and this time he doesn’t blame her for it, because he can also feel how unsteady she is now, limp against the wall and in his arms. She doesn’t fight him either when he gathers her up and carries her toward the bedroom, just slings her arms around his neck like she’s scared he’ll let go, drop her. 

“Now?” Stiles asks again, her voice weaker and shakier than the first time, muffled into the crook of his shoulder as he presses her back against the mattress, straddling her hips and anchoring her there with the weight of his knees on either side of her. “ _Please_?” she gasps, and he silences her with another kiss placed filthily against her mouth. She bites at his tongue and he snarls, making her whimper against him helplessly. 

“ _No talking_ ,” he grunts because it’s hard enough to keep it together just hearing her like this without the litany of dirty words that normally falls unfiltered out of her mouth, just from smelling her, feeling her underneath him. She’s begging for it, and the wolf, _it wants_. Eventually, he has to grab for her hands again, because she’s pulling on his clothes and sliding palms that feel so shockingly cool against his flushed skin all up and down his back, and it’s too distracting, and he can’t even think anything other than the mantra he’s been repeating since last night. _Intent, intent, intent. Control, control, control._

Derek tries to take his time, he does. Mapping his way up her body with careful, measured nips of still-human teeth, soothing the marks he leaves with wet presses of his tongue. By the time he makes it back up to her throat, she’s trembling so hard underneath him he’d be worried if she wasn’t also making those little sounds, greedy and desperate. All he can do for what feels like an eternity is look at her, admiring the swirls of ruddy purple and red he’s left behind all along her shoulders, leading up to that perfect curve of her throat that’s bared now like a shining, blank canvas.

Because he can do this. He _can_.

Stiles thinks he can, and he’ll do anything for her. He’ll try. He _will._

So when he leans down to lave at her throat with his tongue, he’s trying to be careful, really he is, but the weight of it hits him like a slap to the face. He drops his fangs with a hiss and feels Stiles jerk underneath him when the sharp points press into the delicate flesh there. She’s shaking again, quivering under his teeth so much like prey already that the wolf instinctively wants to bite down, hard. Her rapid heartbeat, the way he can almost feel it in his mouth already, her hot blood, the phantom taste already too sweet for him to handle. 

And in that split second, it’s all too much because suddenly it’s not just bite, claim, mine, it’s _rip, tear, rend,_ his claws digging into her hands enough that he hears her cry out, and he pulls away, snarling at his own sudden and overwhelming blood lust. When he comes back to himself enough, he realizes that he at least had the sense to get away from her, because he’s across the room with his back against the wall with no real memory of it happening, Stiles’s brown eyes wide open and blinking curiously at him. 

“Are you okay?” 

_Obviously not._

…

It’s probably a dumb question, one of those she always can’t help but ask. Derek shakes his head and laughs, but it’s one of those bitter ones like earlier that make her stomach hurt. She still hasn’t quite caught her breath yet, chest still heaving, her skin still feeling his hands on it like a ghost’s touch. He’s hardly moved at all, and he’s breathing almost as loudly and heavily as she is.

Derek’s eyes flash red. “You should stay over there.”

“It’s okay, Derek,” Stiles says softly, and now that she feels steady enough, crawls off the bed and steps toward him. It’s careful and slow, but she’s honestly not sure he won’t bolt if she gets too close. “I’m okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t hurt me, I promise.”

He growls at that, seemingly unsatisfied with her answer. “ _I wanted to_.”

She sighs, stepping closer until she can reach out and touch him, which she does when he doesn’t run, raising a hand to cup his cheek, gently and carefully. Surprisingly, he doesn’t pull away, but his mouth is a tight, hard line under her searching fingers and she can feel the vein pulsing in his jaw from where he’s clenching it. “You know I like it when you do,” she says softly, feeling that familiar blush flame over her cheekbones. It’s not like they both don’t know it. Because it doesn’t feel like that to her, like he’s hurting her when he does it. 

“Not the same,” he grits out between clenched teeth. “I wasn’t sinking my fangs into you until now. I told you I couldn’t -- “

Stiles shakes her head and presses a finger to his lips and he blinks at her, askance. “We tried it your way, and that obviously didn’t work.” 

“Obviously,” he says darkly against her finger.

“Do you trust me enough to try it my way?” she asks, leaning in close to nuzzle against his chest, making a soft noise of approval when Derek’s hands find her hair, her back, cradling her gently. _See,_ she wants to say but won’t because now is clearly not the time, _I know what you’re really capable of._

Derek’s expression is mostly unreadable until that little crease softens between his brow and he nods, deliberately, and that ache in her chest for him loosens just a little. 

“Good,” she murmurs, pressing her lips to his cheek in a way she hopes is soothing, “then I’m in charge.”

Derek huffs out a laugh that she tries very hard not to be offended by. “That does not fill me with confidence.”

“Hush, you,” Stiles tuts. “You’ll see. It’ll be okay. We’ll be okay, Sourwolf, I promise.” 

When he doesn’t say anything, least of all object, she thinks maybe he might actually believe her. 

It takes some cajoling, but she finally drags him away from the wall and she gets him to sit on the edge of the bed, though he eyes her suspiciously the entire time like he thinks she’s going to try to pull a fast one on him or something. He’s still staring at her when she crawls behind him, and she doesn’t think she deserves the dubious look he gives her when he watches her warily from over his shoulder. 

Stiles just sticks out her tongue and tugs on the hem of his t-shirt. “Off, please?” And really, he has no room to complain because she’s being nice -- _she’s_ the one saying please, after all. It’s hard not to watch when he does it, reveals all that golden skin. Humming appreciatively, she sits back on her knees, hands on her thighs, trying for patience even though she is _itching_ to touch him.

“Can I?” she asks softly, fingers hovering just over those swirls of black ink she loves so much.

Derek looks confused like he’s not sure why she’s even asking, because of course that would be his reaction. Not like his consent was a big part of his early encounters. Though she knocks that thought right out of her brain because _Kate_ is the last fucking person on earth she wants to be thinking about right now. “You can do whatever you want to me,” he says finally, which makes her dizzy just hearing, let alone picturing. 

Pleased (and a little embarrassed by his admission), she places a kiss at the back of his neck before running her palms unhurried over his shoulders, rubbing at the knobs of his spine with her thumbs. It’s still strange sometimes to see and feel how smooth and unblemished his skin is, because she knows if he couldn’t heal, it wouldn’t be. Sometimes she wonders if they’re all just there, those scars, lingering and hiding just out of sight under the flawless, golden surface. She gets lost in it for who knows how long, just kneading at his muscles, still all taut and stiff. It’s something she used to see her mother do all the time for her father after a hard day, and it warms something in her stomach when she thinks about being able to do the same thing for her soon-to-be-husband. Scott and the others would definitely tease her for it, but she can’t help it. She _likes_ taking care of people, and she’s good at it. It’s kind of her thing. 

“You’re a very tense person,” Stiles quips, skimming and tracing the triskelion burned in the middle of his back with meticulous strokes of her fingers, “has anyone ever told you that?”

“I may have heard that once or twice,” Derek rasps. 

His voice sounds a bit choked, thick like he’s struggling to form the words, like they pain him just a little. It makes her wonder how long it’s been since anyone’s touched him like this, besides her, that didn’t have some kind of an agenda, didn’t _want_ something from him in return. She’s frowning now, thinking how cruel it really is that he’s gone so long without this before her, the reassurance of simple touch. It can’t be easy for him, she knows that, because he’s still getting used to it all over again, all that tactile affection from the pack. He doesn’t flinch away anymore, but she can always tell it still unnerves him. It’s easiest when she touches him, and she’s so fucking grateful that he even lets her do it in the first place. She’s not sure if the situation was reversed, she’d have been able to trust him so utterly the way he does her. He’s so brave, she thinks, and he doesn’t even see it.

“You don’t have to --” he starts, but she just shakes her head and leans in to nip him on the shoulder like he would normally do to admonish her, and he laughs, brokenly. “Sorry, I know, baby. You’re in charge.”

“And don’t you forget it,” Stiles says, nuzzling into his throat before pressing another kiss there. He seems calmer now, she thinks. The ironclad grip he had on the sheets when he first sat down has relaxed enough, and she can no longer see the sharp points of his claws, so she must be helping at least a little. His breathing has quieted too because she can feel it, the slow rise and fall of his chest under her hands. Better, she thinks, much better. 

Letting out a satisfied hum, she slides off the bed but doesn’t remove her hands, letting them trail after her along his body until she’s facing him again. Derek looks more wrecked than she thought he would, just from that, so she leans down to kiss him, giggling a little at the rare position she finds herself in, standing over him like this. Derek groans against her mouth, his hands automatically going to her hips, and he frowns, unsatisfied, when she pushes them away, shaking her head and smirking coyly at him. 

“Now what?” Derek asks, more like growls, because _he’s Derek._

Stiles rolls her eyes but pushes his knees apart so she can fall on hers and settle between them. “Now I’m taking your pants off,” she says matter-of-factly, before deftly undoing the button and pulling down the zipper of his jeans. “Then,” she says, nodding approvingly to herself when he’s finally as naked as she is, “then I’m going to suck you off until you come in my mouth.”

Derek makes a sound she hasn’t heard come out of his mouth before, a choked, whimpering sort of cough that makes her feel far too smug about something she hasn’t even done yet. “And then, I’m not quite sure, but I’m guessing we’ll figure something out.” 

She never gets over how good he feels, not just inside her, but in her hands and in her mouth, too. The taste of him, the weight of him, and it’s not like she’d classify herself as a _cockslut_ , but she might be willing to go to war for Derek’s dick, at the very least. Plus, he makes so many lovely sounds she’s almost never coherent enough to appreciate when they fuck, because she’s usually the one making all the noise (he may have been admittedly right about that). When she takes him into her mouth, teasing him with quick and dirty flicks of her tongue, she watches, awestruck, at the shudder that travels through his whole body. The way he looks at her, his pupils dark and his irises blazing red, it sends pulses straight down to her core, makes her just as wet and achy as if he’d actually reached out and touched her. 

“ _Fuck, god -- baby, I need to -- “_ Derek’s eyes wrench shut and he groans again like he’s forgotten how to speak, but when his hands go tentatively to her hair, she knows what he means, what he wants. 

When she pulls off, he whines, but she just smirks up at him, nodding and pressing the top of her head against his hand. “Go ahead,” she says, “I like it when you pull my hair.” 

It’s true, she does. That little flash of pain always lights her up like a goddamn Christmas tree, and she’s the one moaning now, lips stretched around the head of his leaking cock, having to squeeze her thighs together because even when she’s supposedly in charge, he’s clearly the one calling the shots still when it came to her body’s reactions. 

The harder she works him, the harder he pulls. She’s practically choking on him now, and Derek’s grip on her hair is so tight she can barely move her head, not that she really needs to with Derek fucking up into her mouth. Maybe she shouldn’t be letting him have that power, but who is she to deny him, really, when she loves it just as much as he does? He’s growling now, that low, continuous noise that lets her know he’s getting close. 

“ _Stiles_ ,” Derek whines (and Stiles recognizes it as that, feeling proud), and that’s all the warning she gets before he shoots down her throat and she swallows reflexively. It’s a lot, but she manages, pulling off of him finally with a satisfied moan, licking up what’s spilled out of her mouth with eager sucks of her fingers. 

“You really are going to kill me,” Derek gasps, and it’s muffled in a way she knows without looking means his fangs are out. It still makes her positively giddy that she can do that to him, make him lose it, just a little. It might scare him, letting go like that, but she’s not afraid.

Never afraid of him.

  
  


…

  
  


“Drama queen,” Stiles says, her teeth nipping at his thigh before she sits back on her heels again, gazing up at him like he’s some kind of deity or something and she’s happy to sit down there on her knees just worshipping him. It never fails to floor him when he looks into her eyes like this and sees only devotion, pure and unselfish. How in the world did he ever get so fucking lucky? 

He feels so vulnerable like this in a way that has nothing to do with his nakedness and everything to do with _her_ , how reverently she’s touching him. Like he’s the one who could shatter into pieces so easily instead of her. Stiles makes him feel kind of like that, broken but somehow still strong. _Strong at the broken places_ , he thinks, wryly. Laura used to say that about the two of them, when loneliness and grief weighed on them too much, pushing them right to that breaking point they nearly fell over too many times to count. Maybe it hadn’t been true then, but it feels true now, thanks to Stiles. 

“You’re so beautiful,” she says, and he shakes his head automatically in disagreement. 

Stiles scoffs, placing a kiss on his knee that makes him shiver, before letting her hands roam up and down his legs, tracing the ridges of his stomach, his hip bones, the notches of his ribs with reverent, careful fingers. “I mean it, you are.” 

Derek huffs out a laugh. “I knew you were only in it for my body.” It’s a joke, but at the same time, they both know it could easily be true if she were somebody else. Somebody who’d never looked at him as anything other than a body to be used up and thrown away like a broken toy when it no longer served its purpose. 

“While I am admittedly both president and vice president of the Derek Hale’s Six Pack Appreciation Club,” Stiles says toothily, offering him another shy smile, “it’s not my favorite part.” Her palm glides hotly up his stomach before settling at that patch of hair in the middle of his chest.

“What,” Derek asks, arching an eyebrow, “my chest hair?”

Stiles rolls her eyes again, which makes him laugh. “No, dumbass. _Your heart_.” 

And...oh. 

Derek doesn’t know what to say to that, and he finds he has to look away from her, stare up at the ceiling because his eyes are suddenly itchy and hot in a way that has nothing to do with the shift. 

“I mean it,” Stiles says, and the thing is, he _knows_ she does, and that’s exactly why he can’t quite look at her. It’s not like he can really hide though, because Stiles is on her feet now, hoisting herself into his lap, her small hands cradling his face and turning it gently toward her until he’s forced to meet her eyes. 

“I know that,” Derek breathes, “because _you’re the crack_.”

Stiles is the one tilting her head for a change, obviously confused. “I give you such a nice compliment, and you compare me to hard drugs?” she asks, laughing. “Not very romantic, Sourwolf.” 

“I wasn’t,” Derek says, nuzzling against her forehead. “It’s Leonard Cohen. _The crack -- it’s how the light gets in_ ,” he answers sheepishly. Maybe she’s too young for the reference, in which case he steels himself for another old-man joke, but it doesn’t come. 

Although clumsy, it must’ve been the right thing to say, because she’s kissing him now, her mouth hungry and fevered and rough against his in a way she isn’t normally. All he can do is hang on, chase after her tongue with his own when she pulls away just long enough to catch her breath. She’s just as needy as he is, he can tell from the way she’s raking her hands over him now, how she’s letting him bury his fingers in those messy curls and hold her in place.

“Can I have you now,” he gasps against her lips,“ _please?”_

Stiles whines and nods, rolling her hips against his all desperate and searching. She’s so wet, he can smell it, and when he drags his hand down to spread her open, she’s drenched enough that she’s dripping onto his fingers. “Fucking christ, baby, how are you so perfect for me?” he gasps, his hold on her waist tightening enough to keep her in place when his thumb grazes her clit and he curls two fingers inside of her. 

“ _Because I’m yours_ ,” Stiles breathes, and the wolf in Derek howls in agreement, and he wants to howl right along with it. “ _So do it. Make me yours, wolf_.” 

When she sinks down on him, they both groan, relishing the familiar heat, hot and wet and tight and _perfect,_ of their bodies that somehow fit together despite all the evidence that might suggest that they wouldn’t. Stiles doesn’t move, getting used to the stretch, but when she rocks her hips, a slow drag over his lap, it sends those little shocks of pleasure bursting through his veins.

Stiles moans, clawing at his shoulders all frantic like she needs something to hang on to, anything. “I got you,” Derek murmurs, bracing his palm over her hip, a bruising hold, to guide her when she sets the rhythm, a steady rise and fall that knocks the breath out of his lungs every time she moves, letting him slip out of her just enough to leave him wanting, just for a moment, before slamming back down on him. 

“Do it now,” she begs, and he’s sex-drunk enough to not quite understand what she means until she looks right into his eyes and she sees it, how badly she _wants_ , and bares her throat to him like he isn’t the most dangerous predator in the room. “Please, baby? I need it, I want it -- I --”

He needs her to come first, _has to make her come first_ , reaching down to where they’re joined to grind the heel of his palm over her throbbing clit. She keens, sounding shattered by the touch, slamming her forehead down against his shoulder, shaking so hard he thinks he can hear her teeth rattle. That’s it, that’s enough, so while she’s still riding the high, he wraps his hands in her curls and yanks hard until that tendon in her neck is pulled taut as a bowstring. His fangs drop and his mouth waters, but he doesn’t falter, doesn’t hesitate, before rearing back and sinking them into her pale, white flesh. 

It’s like nothing and everything he’s imagined, the way her blood spurts hot and sweet over his tongue, not at all the same as when he’d bit his betas. It was just different, _more_ , and he feels only her, only this, like he’s reaching out to touch some part of her he never has before. Maybe he’d call it her soul, but he’s not exactly the metaphysical type, so maybe it’s just her, plain and simple. Just Stiles. And he’s never felt so at peace more than right now, in this moment with her, tied together in every way possible.

…

She expected it to hurt. She’s not dumb. Those are _teeth_ tearing into her delicate, very human flesh. Still, the pain floors her for a moment, though it feels strange and slightly disconnected from her body since it’s competing with the orgasm still rocketing its way through her, making her feel all sluggish and weak-kneed. Stiles is pretty sure she hears screaming too, and it takes her another moment to realize it’s coming from her own mouth. The pain changes though, into something else, something that sends heat straight through her like she’s on fire from the inside, like the flames are licking at her skin trying to burn their way out. 

She’d expected it to hurt. She hadn’t expected it to feel so good. She comes back to herself enough to recognize Derek unclenching his jaw and pulling back his teeth, and she moans at the loss, an unexpected reaction she doesn’t understand. Suddenly, she feels almost drunk, her whole body feeling heavy and hazy and filled up in a way she doesn’t quite understand either, but knows intrinsically that it has everything to do with the newly minted mark on her collarbone.

When her eyes open again, she realizes she must have either fallen asleep or passed out, because she’s on her back now, Derek hovering over her with that pinched, slightly worried look on his face.

“Hey,” she says, smiling “I’m not dead. And look, mom,” she holds up her hands, a little shaky, but entirely human, “no claws.” 

“You’re hilarious,” Derek says dryly, rolling his eyes, but he’s smiling too, looking at her in such a fond way that it makes her blush. “Are you okay?”

Is she okay? _Seriously?_ Stiles arches an eyebrow that, although not as impressive as when he does it, still clearly communicates what she’s thinking well enough, which is _you’re ridiculous_. “I’m fine.” More than fine. So, so good, actually. Tentatively, she reaches up to graze her throat, wincing a little when her fingers slide over the puncture wounds now adorning her neck. It stings a little, but the residual post-orgasm tingles coupled with the endorphins have made quick work of the pain. Derek must still notice her slight flinch because he leans down to stroke his tongue over the marks and she sighs because it feels almost criminally good. 

“I want to see,” she says insistently, and then she’s squirming underneath him trying to get him to let her up. 

“You shouldn’t move yet,” Derek says. “You’re still weak.”

“No’m not,” Stiles slurs, and okay maybe that’s not her inspiring the most confidence, but she’s fine. She can move. She can walk. _She’ll show him_. Derek smirks and shakes his head, but moves off of her and waves his hand as if to say, _go ahead, prove me wrong._

She hardly sits up before the world goes all wavy and shimmery. “Nevermind,” she squeaks, shutting her eyes, “this bed is my new home. I live here now.” 

Derek laughs and Stiles sticks her tongue out. 

“I love you,” Derek says softly and suddenly, and the grin that splits over Stiles’s face is immediate. He rarely says it out loud, but when he does, god she wants to hear him say it over, and over, forever. 

“You will,” Derek whispers, leaning down to press kisses all over her face that leave her giggling. “I promise.”

“What, did you read my mind or something? Is that a fun and wacky side effect?” 

“No,” Derek says, placing a kiss against his bite that makes her shiver. “I didn’t have to read your mind because I was thinking the same thing.”

_Forever._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Here are some reference photos I used for the fic. I hope you all enjoyed it at least somewhat. Sorry for the cluttery links but I couldn't figure out how to embed them :c
> 
> Female Stiles FC: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcTn1DqDhtCJcZJHRU_eF_a9D4CgzMijCvGtBQ&usqp=CAU
> 
> The bracelet: https://images.app.goo.gl/c74aDGSsNrN8TeTy9
> 
> Cassidy: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/6d/0a/44/6d0a44ff7854c868fa05cbc3b412a9ff.jpg


End file.
